Underwhelming pokemon

[KOZSTAR]

Klefki. Do I need to explain?

 

[Amore]

Gen 3 Manectric
Had high hopes on Elektrike, but Manectric was an uninspired speedy, special oriented, pure Electric type cliché with nothing interesting to offer back then. All its moveset was Electric/Normal moves and Bite, so it was like Jolteon but weaker and with less coverage. Fixed in Gen 4 onwards with the ability to learn Flamethrower and Overheat making it quite more interesting.

Yup, he kick names and took [censored] in Cool Contests, but a crushing disappointment in battles. So easy to level up too due to the abundance of water battles, but a move pool that bad is always going to hold you back. I don't think I've used one since I discovered this website and learned a bit, which is surprising given how much Pokémon I've played in about 15 years.

Those cool Electric types were done dirty...I've got an IV-bred egg-moved (Ice Fang, but previously had all 3), EV-trained Luxray in my Platinum save now and even then it can still underwhelm with Thunderbolt.

- Serperior in the initial Black playthrough. Learns so many Grass-type moves, but little else. Did not appreciate boosting moves or Leech Seed then either. Essentially only knew Leaf Blade (and sort of Giga Drain, but given base 75 Special Attack...).

- Liepard in the initial Black playthrough. Dropped several pegs in aesthetics by evolving.

Yeah, other than my adoration for Bulbasaur I tend to like my Pokémon fast and/or powerful. One save with Snivy did stick, SubSeed+Coil+Leaf Blade can be fun in endless rebottles against the rival, but when I go back to it now I'm not sure how I took it that far. Yeah when I saw Liepard I was glad I hadn't chosen to take one on, I'm just not a fan. Needs the Gengar treatment (by which I mean I absolutely love Gengar's HgSs colour change).

Mightyena. This beautiful pokemon is quite defensively fragile. I absolutely adore its design and always have and it is a Pokémon in which I still do love. However, after utilizing one in ORAS I swiftly found that the more I progressed in the game, the more outclassed my beloved dark-type pokemon seemed in comparison to opposing pokemon. Mightyena certainly can deal significant damage, yet can't take any in return. It is notable that Mightyena was exceptional in the early game, however.Moreover, Mightyena has a mediocre learnset and only has access to a limited number of TMs which it is able to use, which hinders its usability considerably.

In Gen III Mightyena sucks even more, due to the impossibility of physical STAB. I wasn't a particular fan of Poochyena but enjoyed seen the evolution in the wild, and was very, very disappointed. Absolutely was a similar experience.

Lotad/Lombre/Ludicolo in Emerald.

You can't get a Water Stone until after defeating Tate and Liza. And Lombre suuuuuuucks. It doesn't learn any decent Water or Grass moves and has horrific stats. Lombre's completely useless until you get the Surf HM... And then still close to useless until it finally evolves. After the 7th gym.
Even once you get Ludicolo, it still doesn't learn any moves by level up. You have to waste the only Giga Drain TM in the entire game on it.
I went from being excited to see Lotad in my Nuzlockes to dreading it.

Yes. I never got my hands on a Water Stone the first time I beat Emerald, my Lombre was just a sacrificial lily to revive Rayquaza. I did eventually give one a go in a weather team (I also have a Castform) a couple of years back, following the walkthrough to get the stone and he is cool in Battle Frontier. But for one available so early, it doesn't half go off the boil.

Also, while I'm in here again, many stone evolution Pokemon are definitely underwhelming in earlier generations because they don't learn any new moves. Like, I love Ninetales, I've used one multiple times, but the fact it cannot learn any new moves naturally once it evolves is very underwhelming for me. I think it's still like this for a lot of stone evolution Pokemon, too, so I try to always wait until a stone evolution Pokemon has learned all its good moves before evolving it since you know... it never will learn a new move through levelling up again?

I've come to the conclusion Ninetales was purposefully saddled with a poor move pool because if it was that beautiful and capable in battle, it would replace Pikachu as the mascot :P Like Manectric, its great for contests in Gen III though!
Even when it got Energy Ball in Gen IV it was an egg move. I discovered it by accident when trying to raise my first Ninetales in daycare in a vain hope it would eventually learn moves.

Although I love Hoenn as my first game was set there, I have to say there are a lot of Pokémon listed in this thread I am incredibly frustrated by from the region haha!
Not on the level of any of the above complaints, but Wallace's Wailord with Water Spout seemed so fearsome...actually possessing one was not so good.
All of the complaints made about Lotad/Lombre/Ludicolo also apply to Seedot(so cute!)/Nuzleaf/Shiftry...only I don't even think they're that great fully-evolved. I gave up on Dots before heading out into water world / late-stage Hoenn.

 

[Adam Levine]

In my B2W2 postgame playthrough, there were some Pokémon that were pretty fun to use, even if they kinda sucked. Manectric with its high Special Attack and Volt Switch, Tropius with Leech Seed and sun-based shenanigans, Relicanth with its ridiculous Defense and Stealth Rock, Zangoose with its great Attack and coverage, and heck, even Castform pulling its own weight in battle, even if I decided to spend three of its moveslots on weather.

...Then there's Lunatone. Lunatone is a specially oriented Rock-type without any good special Rock moves (not even Power Gem???), it has six weaknesses (seven if you have Mold Breaker), and its bulk is pretty lackluster. Heck, at least Solrock, its physical counterpart, gets Zen Headbutt. Speaking of Generation III Pokémon without an evolutionary line, Seviper. Now I wish Arbok evolved into it, because its stats are horrid: its best stats are in both Attack and Special Attack. They're both a solid 100, but a mixed attacker is already a rough start for most Pokémon, and the fact that its next highest stat, HP, is 73, is...ugh. That is bad.

 

[Sheep]

Mine is Mightyena. Back in the day, catching a Dark type that early in the game was so exiting to me. Back then we only had Umbreon (which evolved through friendship and was some reason difficult for me to understand as a kid) and Houndour, Sneasel, or Tyranitar, Pokemon you could only get at the end of the game. Thank God for Absol.

I totally understand this. I remember trying to train a Mightyena and finding it so cool how it was one of the few Pokémon with Intimidate, only to be.....a slight bit disappointed later on. Dark being a special type in gen III and its base special being a whopping 60 made me want to run it with a fully physical set, haha. :(

 

[DelibirdTrainer]

Chikorita in Gen 2. Bulbasaur was my starter in Gen 1 and the lack of a Poison type really cripples Chikorita. I didn't understand this at that time and only got frustrated

 

[Iceshadow3317]

I have never really felt underwhelmed by a pokemon until Shield.

First up, there is Toxel - I thought this pokemon was gonna be the next Lucario or Zoroark. I was excited to finally get my hands on the egg because I thought it was gonna be the only one in game and then, oh.... they can be found in the wild... Not only that, but it had no moves at all. You couldn't train it like a normal pokemon. You had to send it in and bring it back. It felt like it took ages for me to get it to Lv 30. Until tonight, I thought there was something special needed like friendship, but guess not. I just didn't like the pokemon. I was excited for Toxtricity, but ended up not even using it. In fact, this was the first time I had almost used all old pokemon in a new generation game.

Applin was another pokemon. Much like Toxel, it had no moves and you couldn't evolve it for the longest time. And I just lost interest in it. I hate that I did. I really love Flapple. I was excited to use it, but by the time you get to the point where it could evolve, there was just no point to do so.

 

[Daveslab2022]

Gliscor is my favorite Pokémon overall. However Gligar is just too weak to bother training when you can typically catch him in game, and then by the time you get the trade evo, he's just been a waste of a team slot for so long, it's not even worth it anymore.

I still love Gliscor though. Too cool.

 

[PageEmp]

Personally, I believe every non-gimmick creature is somewhat usable in battle. There are definitely some guys who are worse than others, but that is fine because all of them can help you get through at least some portion of the game. As far as creatures previous users have mentioned, the only ones I can really say that I can understand are Klefki, Sunflora, and maybe, but only MAYBE Glaceon.

Almost never am I disappointed with entire species, because almost all the time will I use another one who would redeem it for me. But, as far as specific members of the species are concerned, I would most definitely nominate the specific Poliwag I found while playing Pokemon Omicron (I think?). The ONLY reason I needed it was to have an early surfer. The only reason.

It was possibly the worst specific creature I tried to use in recent memory. It had both a defense lowering nature and seemingly horrific IVs in defense, and basically every single basic attack nearly killed it. It did have decent attack, but shit moves in Bubble, so it failed in that regard as well. If I wasn't constantly running around to heal the damn thing, I was wasting gallons and gallons of healing items on it, just for it to function. And to top it all off, once I finally got it caught up, it dies. To a freaking Klink, used by a totally normal and random trainer who was a whole bunch of levels under.

Overall, juat trying to use this damn thing gave me a headache. However, just because this specific Poliwag was terrible doesn't mean it applies to the whole species. I still sort of like it, especially since I know it will eventually evolve into two seemingly great creatures in which both of them are at the too of my want to use list. In the Adventures Red Chapter ROM hack, I did try out Poliwrath and had some fun with it, but I still would like to us one for a longer time.

 

[Wuzzy]

I've used quite a few underwhelming Pokemon in my time, I usually try and use them until the end but sometimes it just makes things pretty annoying to say the least. Anyways...

Carvanha/Sharpedo - Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness: I remember reading a really old tier list and saw Carvanha in like A tier, so I thought I'd give it a shot and see what's up. Carvanha's early game is pretty solid, Water Pulse + Bite is very good at this point in the game. However, once you reach ONBS and start facing trainers (or ig grunts) with better Pokemon (evolved early game Pokemon like Mightyena and other Pokemon that can't evolve like Torkoal and Sudowoodo), Carvanha starts to struggle. I remember in Phenac City where Carvanha could do nothing because it couldn't KO Pokemon reliably due to the P/S split and, it just fainted in one hit from just about any neutral move. Sharpedo wasn't even that much better since it still had the same bulk and power issues as Carvanha but, I'm facing stronger Pokemon at this stage (also Water Pulse is just pitiful at this point and not having HMs for easy Surf and Waterfall sucked)

Absol - Pokemon RSE: I remember being so excited seeing Absol because I thought it was really cool and because it was rare, I immediately thought it was a great Pokemon. Turns out, I was pretty underwhelmed using it as an adult. Absol's main issue is the P/S split not favoring its stats, so it really needs TMs like Shadow Ball and/or Return to function. Absol is also slow contrary to its appearance and just needing TMs to function made it pretty underwhelming to me (and its performance was ehh even with Shadow Ball + Return)

Togepi - Pokemon Platinum: I used Togepi during a mono-normal run and it was pretty terrible to use. The Togepi/Togetic stage was painful and, I needed to buy TMs for it to get through the mid game portion since its strongest move at this point was Magical Leaf. As a Togekiss, it was pretty decent but, it still needed investment as I forked over 2 Heart Scales for Air Slash and Aura Sphere to get it going. Overall, Togekiss was great (though it struggles against Candace/Volkner which is not ideal), Togepi/Togetic were absolutely painful to use and the journey to the Shiny Stone felt like it took ages

Bulbasaur - Pokemon FRLG: Bulbasaur has a great early game due to the type advantages but, it's mid to late game was pretty poor. Having Razor Leaf as its best move for a while isn't good, so I usually had to resort to Poison Powder + Leech Seed to get through some fights. For most of the mid to late game, always found myself having to rely on Strength (especially against the Rocket Grunts) which wasn't great since it didn't do great damage either? Giga Drain only having 5 PP also didn't really help either since I'd constantly have to go back to the PC each time

 

[OumpaLumpa]

Every. Fossil. Ever.

 

[Escther]

Gyarados before the physical/special split. I was playing a gen 3 ROM hack earlier and was so excited to get a Gyarados...that is, until I remembered that all those powerful water moves are special. Even things like bite do like 0 damage. Even the dragon moves. And it can't learn fly.

 

[Sheep]

Gyarados before the physical/special split. I was playing a gen 3 ROM hack earlier and was so excited to get a Gyarados...that is, until I remembered that all those powerful water moves are special. Even things like bite do like 0 damage. Even the dragon moves. And it can't learn fly.

This was actually a big part of why I didn't want to use it back in GSC. :'( It benefited so much from the physical/special split!